South coast most likely to see snowflakes, though a full festive blanketing has been unlikely for decades now

While ongoing showers might suggest this Christmas will be a washout, experts say a wintry snap is on its way and some areas of the UK might even have a white Christmas.

According to the Met Office, high pressure is building – meaning that, while some areas may experience showers,...

LiDAR technology addresses limitations, such as slow capture times, limited range, and indoor-only constraints, of older methods, thanks to LiDAR’s automation, efficiency, and the ability to capture a space’s or object’s full geometry with precision, with millimeter accuracy. It works well both in indoor and outdoor conditions, including total darkness or bright outdoors.  That’s why […]

Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis have already accrued millions of driverless rides in cities worldwide.

As number of lunar satellites soars, sites will be marked out where defunct hardware can be crash-landed

Patches of the moon are destined to become spacecraft graveyards where dead lunar satellites and other defunct hardware can be crashed into the ground, far away from sites of cultural and scientific importance, researchers say.

The number of satellites circling the moon is set to soar in the...

Researchers have realised the records are a ‘goldmine’ to study changes in environmental conditions

Yangang Xing had never heard of organ-tuning books, but his colleague Andrew Knight often played the pipe organ at churches as a teenager.

When the pair, who are researchers at Nottingham Trent University, set out to study how environmental conditions in churches had changed over time, Knight...

From HIV to TB, scientists and doctors made breakthroughs in treatment and prevention of some of the world’s deadliest diseases

With humanitarian funding slashed by the US and other countries, including the UK, this year’s global health headlines have made grim reading. But good things have still been happening in vaccine research and the development of new and improved treatments for some of...

This is the latest in the relentless purge of climate researchers who refuse to be co-opted by the fossil fuel industry

The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin would no doubt have understood and even appreciated the latest attack by the Trump administration on climate researchers and their work.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, is to be dismantled after more than 50...

Axelspace Corporation (“Axelspace”), a leading microsatellite company committed to making “Space within Your Reach,” has entered into a service agreement with Pale Blue Inc. (“Pale Blue”), a company that develops, manufactures, and sells thrusters (engines) for small satellites, for an in-orbit demonstration, as detailed below.

The year ahead in numbers

As we say goodbye to 2025, let’s delight in its numerical charms one final time. The year was unique this century as being a square number.

442 = 1936

452 = 2025

462 = 2116

Five 9s

Six 8s.

Six 7s.

Six 6s.

Four 5s.

Six 4s.

Four 3s.

Four 2s.

a partridge in a pear tree. (Only joking)

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Patient watchers should wrap up warm to witness one of nature’s subtler events on night of 22 to 23 December

If the Geminids whetted your appetite for meteor showers, then you are in luck. This week it is the turn of the Ursids. Admittedly, they are nowhere near as plentiful as the Geminids, producing a maximum of just 10 meteors an hour, but there is a unique satisfaction to witnessing one of...

Survey adds to experts’ concern about addiction risk and highlights support for plan to ban sales to under-18s

One in eight teenagers aged 14 to 17 have used nicotine pouches, a survey has found, adding to health experts’ concern about their growing popularity.

Users hold the small sachets, which look like mini-teabags and are often flavoured, in their mouths to enjoy the release of the...

Cutting-edge therapies exist, but the market cannot deliver them cheaply. Britain must build NHS capacity so that cures become collective goods, not expensive products

Just a small fraction of our 20,000 genes can cause disease when disrupted – yet that sliver accounts for thousands of rare disorders. The difficulty is: what can a doctor do to treat them? In a common condition such as type 2...

The commercialisation of the cosmos is already underway, and our current laws aren’t fit for purpose

If there is one thing we can rely on in this world, it is human hubris, and space and astronomy are no exception.

The ancients believed that everything revolved around Earth. In the 16th century, Copernicus and his peers overturned that view with the heliocentric model. Since then, telescopes...

Michaela Benthaus from Germany soared 65 miles above the Earth’s surface in 10-minute Blue Origin flight

A paraplegic engineer from Germany blasted off on a dream-come-true rocket ride with five other passengers on Saturday, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while beholding Earth from on high.

Severely injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, Michaela Benthaus became...

UN body to study possibility of integrating centuries-old practices into mainstream healthcare

From herbalists in Africa gathering plants to use as poultices to acupuncturists in China using needles to cure migraines, or Indian yogis practising meditation, traditional remedies have increasingly being shown to work, and deserve more attention and research, according to a World Health...